Insecurity
by OakleafHeron
Summary: Dick wakes up after having a disturbing dream about his future. It's an ungodly hour of night, but he knows just the guy to turn to. Set a little after Season 1.


Dick's eyes shot open, and for a few seconds, his chest heaved as he drew in long breaths and exhaled noisily. As he felt his heart rate settle, he noted that the moon was still in the night sky, its soft light streaming through his window, bathing his room in a dim glow. He wriggled to a sitting position as he contemplated the contents of his dream, which was odd, to say the least. It was as if his subconscious suddenly became a dystopian fanatic, and decided to twist the lives of those closest to him, and some made-up people whom he was sure he'd never seen before, but he didn't want to dwell on that.

He rolled to the edge of the bed to retrieve his phone and glance at the time. It was four in the morning, but he needed to talk to someone. This dream had felt so…real compared to the night terrors that he'd had on countless occasions before this, and he felt horrified of what he did. Or, at least, what he'd done in the dream. He put his phone back on top of the bedside table before feeling his way down the front of the table. He found the drawer he was looking for and slid it open before searching through its contents. A second later, he'd found what he needed and settled into a seated position on the edge of his bed.

He unlocked the phone, searching through the contacts. Bruce had provided phones to the whole Team in case they needed to contact each other and discuss things related to their vigilante identities. At first, Dick had thought he was just being his regular paranoid self, but now, he was grateful for his foresight. It would be extremely difficult to talk to someone about his dream without mentioning the Team. As he was having that thought, he accidentally scrolled past the person he was looking for in his contact list and had to frantically scroll up again to find them. He let out a long sigh before dialling them, hoping that they'd pick up, although it was a ridiculously ungodly time of night.

On the third ring, they picked up, and Dick eagerly put the phone to his ear.

"Hello?" Wally asked, his speech slightly slurred. He was probably only half awake, but that was better for Dick than him being completely asleep.

"Hey, Wall, sorry for waking you up," Dick replied.

There was a pause on the other end before Wally said, "It's fine, Dick. What's wrong?"

Dick bit the inside of his cheek, almost regretting calling Wally. But he'd already come this far, and his friend was partially awake now, so there was no going back. Unless, of course, he was willing to face an infinitely more annoying Wally West the next day. Or would that be later this morning? He was planning on going to Mount Justice late, but that was beside the point, he supposed.

"I had a nightmare," he said. "It was…different from all the other ones I've had before. It looked like we were all older. You remember that Nightwing guy from the stories Clark told us?"

"Yeah," Wally said.

"Well, I was him in my dream. I mean, instead of being Robin."

"Interesting…" Wally commented. Dick nodded, before catching himself in the action and realising how stupid it was considering Wally could only hear his voice.

"Yeah, I thought so too. But that's not really the important bit. So, what happened was that you and Artemis quit the Team-" Dick managed to say before he was interrupted.

"What!" Wally burst out. "That's ridiculous. There's no way you believe that that's actually gonna happen."

"Well, it happened in my dream," Dick said. "Anyway, so Kaldur was working deep undercover to infiltrate the Light, so I brought Artemis back in, faked her death and lied to the Team about it so she could join him. Then a couple of weeks later, I blew up Mount Justice. Well, not me, but Kaldur, but I arranged it-"

"Wait, hold on. This is happening without the Team's knowing about it!?" Wally asked abruptly. Dick frowned, silent for a moment as he went over his thoughts again.

"Well, yeah. See, that's what's making me terrified, Wally. What kind of monster am I to do all of that? Especially with what happened in that training simulation a year or two ago. I led all of you to your deaths then! I thought I'd learned my lesson about keeping things from the Team, but now, I have a dream like this!" Dick practically yelled as he stood up to pace agitatedly around his room. "Just…don't be surprised if I resign from the Team sometime soon."

"Dude, it was just a dream," Wally quickly said. "How much sleep are you getting these days? And don't you have your finals coming up? Are you sure that it's not all the stress that you're under from, well, the life?"

Dick sighed, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as if that would help him see the situation more clearly. As Wally's words fully registered with him, he realised that maybe his friend was right. Things had been particularly difficult lately between the Team and Gotham Academy. He had also noticed that Barbara had been acting a little shifty recently, and he felt that confirming the reason behind her behaviour would only complicate things. But with all of this happening in his life already, adding the prospect of him abandoning his morals and picking up Bruce's work ethics in the future just made things a whole lot worse.

"Maybe it is," he replied hesitantly, "I don't really know anymore, Wall. I'm just really worried that I'll end up working like Bruce, you know?" He heard Wally draw breath to comment, and he swiftly added, "Not that there's anything wrong with the way he does things. But the way I see it, the mission should come behind the people carrying it out."

"Yeah, I understand why you think that way, Dick," was Wally's response. "And you're right about Bruce's methods. They can border on cold-hearted sometimes. But the only issue I see here is you."

"I'm sorry, what!?" Dick said incredulously. He heard a soft whistling sound over the phone and puzzled over what it was before he realised that Wally was probably pacing just like he was, only, with his superspeed, he was probably burning holes into his carpet.

"Well…" Wally finally said. "Not you. Well not really, anyway. But you're doubting yourself. You can't do that. You remember that, right? You're only making things worse. You believe in putting the mission second, or third, or last, even? Stick up for that. Work to make it happen all the time. Heck, if you're up for it, convince Bruce! If he's doing it, then you won't have to worry about learning from his oh so terrible example."

Dick listened to his friend's words intently. They were surprisingly wise considering that they were having this discussion at an ungodly hour of night, and Wally had a habit of thinking with his mouth. "Thanks, Wall. I'll keep it in mind. I think I needed to hear that from someone."

"No prob," Wally answered. "After all, that's what bros are for."

Dick grinned at Wally's casual demeanour. "Yeah, I guess so," he said before another thought crossed his mind. "Hey, if I do ever cross that line-"

"Which you won't," Wally interrupted. Dick paused for a second before continuing.

"If I ever do something like that, stop me, alright?" he told him.

"Yeah, yeah, sure, it won't come to that," Wally said dismissively. Dick shrugged, momentarily forgetting for the second time that Wally couldn't see him.

"Whatever you say, Wall," he said. He glanced at the clock on his phone. "Wall, we should probably get some sleep if we want to head to the cave tomorrow. Dinah's gonna shove us through hell and drag us back by our toenails, and I don't want to be half dead when she's doing that." Dick heard Wally's attempt to stifle a snicker, before he added, "Thanks for the talk and goodnight, Wall."

"Goodnight, Dick. And no need to thank me. I'm here for you anytime you need me. That's just what we do for each other."

Dick grinned again at his words before saying one final, "Bye." and hanging up. He chucked the phone back into the drawer, kicking it shut carelessly before diving under the covers again. His fingers had gone numb while he was talking to Wally, thanks to the cool night air. As he rubbed them together to warm them up, he felt his whirlwind of a mind settle. Now that Wally had cleared his doubt, he was beginning to consider the better sections of his dream. He had become Nightwing? He supposed that he had dreamed that up because he had been considering making a switch from Robin for a while now. The problem would be breaking the news to Bruce and… He noticed the less optimistic turn in his thoughts and stopped considering the matter. He could figure it out another day. For now, he would enjoy his moment of peace, all of his insecurities temporarily buried in the back of his mind.

* * *

**A/N: So I was sleep deprived. So I started contemplating random things. Then I started considering how Dick's actions in Season 2 were really contradictory to his morals in Season 1, and I kinda wanted to explore that a little without involving messy time travel. (sorry I watch the Flash and you kinda want to avoid time traveling after that so...) **

**Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed.**


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